How geospatial analytics is helping hunt the LRA and al-Shabaab

In May 2012 Caesar Acellam, a commander of the
Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and military strategist for the
extremist group's leader Joseph Kony, was captured by the Ugandan
army. The act appeared to be a coup for local forces that had for
nearly three decades -- along with multiple regional governments
and the 100 US special forces soldiers sent in 2012 -- failed to
thwart the militant group's leader, a man wanted by the
International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity including
the abduction of tens of thousands of children.

The capture of one of his top-ranking commanders
was made possible, in part, because local forces suddenly knew
where to look. Kony's men could not hide from a constellation of
five ever-watchful satellites put into orbit by satellite imagery and geospatial analytics firm DigitalGlobe.

"An individual will always be
consciously or subconsciously employing their background in a
geospatial environment"

Jim
Morentz, DigitalGlobe consultant

The LRA lurks in unnavigable jungle regions in
the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan and the Central
African Republic, preferring the cloak of the forest since being
ousted from Uganda in around 2005, carrying light arms to remain
mobile and exploiting weak national borders with guerrilla tactics.
It emerges to terrorise and steal, kill and kidnap, swooping into
remote villages to pluck children that will go on to be killed,
forced to fight or used as human shields or sex slaves. Drawing on
hundreds of data points, including terrain information, prior LRA
attacks, access to resources and locations of Internally Displaced
Persons (IDP), DigitalGlobe was able to generate what it calls a
"signature" for LRA behaviour. Once this data was "scrubbed" so
every pixel was assigned significant value, algorithms generated a
heat map pinpointing where that signature repeats: likely areas of
future attacks. Acellam was found in just such a region.

Knowing your target

"An individual will always be consciously or
subconsciously employing their background, experience and comfort
level in a geospatial environment; they go to places they're
comfortable with in the same way we shop in places we're
comfortable," Jim Morentz, a Homeland Security Technology
Consultant who has worked with DigitalGlobe, told Wired.co.uk.
"They're really detectable because they have a single pattern. If
individuals self-select into a gang, there are peer pressures that
change them into a single mode of operations and the gang's own
procedures create a behavioural pattern. Again, you might be
dealing with 100 people but there aren't too many behavioural
deviations because that's not allowed in a
gang.In the same way, terrorist organisation
training creates observable patterns."

Analysis of Rafai, Central African RepublicDigitalGlobe

On a cloudless day, DigitalGlobe's constellation
of satellites is hovering over the Sudan and South Sudan borders as
part of the Satellite Sentinel Project, where in May 2013 it found
both nations violating a treaty by lining the buffer border zone
with military personnel; it's watching over Syria, where in 2012
images showed the devastation in Aleppo, where more than 600
craters pockmarked a once thriving city; it's scouring 400km2 of
Malawi's Phalombe District, cross-referencing infrastructure,
population and soil moisture data to recommend the best locations
for new wells for Water Wells for Africa (WWFA); and in Central
Africa it's tracking IDF camps, looking to see whether they're more
permanent and made of tin, or tents, so protection can be sent to
vulnerable populations.

Morentz says "every crisis has a spatial
component to it", be that the spatial relationship between the
hazard, the people it affects, the buildings or the response
resources. All these things allow us to predict what might happen
next if a flood were to hit or a bomb were to go off. Where
DigitalGlobe differs, however, is in its practice of bringing
together multiple layers of rich data to map our future, most
recently partnering with crowdsourcing firm Tomnod.

"People interact with physical spaces in very
predictable ways"

Colleen
McCue, DigitalGlobe

"We have people who are true trade craft experts
that know how to combine information on the ground, research,
imagery, geography and bring it all together," explains Stephen
Wood, vice president of DigitalGlobe's Analysis Centre. "A lot of
what we end up doing is storytelling; putting together the story
with facts, figures, maps and imagery to make it meaningful. It
begins with adding all the layers -- linguistic issues, societal
problems, attacks on refugee camps, health factors. Using this
database, analysts interpret, model and simulate 'what if?', then
look at that from a geographical perspective. Combine that with
imagery and you're able to verify if your hypothesis is valid.
Narrow it down, and indications appear on a heat map. You see this
intensity where it will tell you if it's an area with all the right
characteristics of what you're looking for. In this case in Africa,
anticipating where attacks may occur or villages may be at
risk."

ORB International interviewers in SomaliaORB International

Key to positive outcomes are not just the images
its $800m satellites capture every second, but people. Behaviour is
as essential as visual data, and understanding the behaviour of a
group that appears to operate with no direct agenda except to
terrorise (Kony, who has positioned himself as a mystic and
spiritual leader, had wanted Uganda to be ruled by the law of the
ten commandments, but aside from that the LRA's agenda is fluid) is
an enormous feat. Hundreds of kilometres above Earth, the
satellites capture a miniature game of cat and mouse between
factions, armed forces and the public, but it's when this data is
injected with behavioural analysis and local knowledge it becomes
most powerful.

"Target audience analysis in a conflict zone
is about identifying where those people are who are susceptible to
radicalising and joining Al-Qaeda"

Johnny
Heald, ORB International

"People interact with physical spaces in very
predictable ways," Colleen McCue, senior director, social science
and quantitative methods at DigitalGlobe, told Wired.co.uk. McCue,
who has worked with the FBI, explains the gang behaviour Morentz
alluded to: "The LRA has a strong association with areas that are
relatively remote and they generally want privacy, especially if
they want to kidnap people and move hostages. Tactically, that has
lots of requirements. They want to be away from people that might
intervene and making sure they can move individuals is important.
Those cluster in different areas from where they would go and kill
people. They will go to areas where there's tree cover or go
outside of the sight lines from a village so they have privacy and
time. It's predatory."

If there's an impenetrable river or mountain range
nearby, the LRA is unlikely to engage in a kidnap that requires
them to move quickly. Resources are key. DigitalGlobe maps show
when a 2011 drought hit Southern Somalia, for instance, it drove
45,000 residents from the city of Baardheere to the riverbanks,
making them an open target for al-Shabaab,
another militant group being watched closely by DigitalGlobe.
Just last
week the group, which controls most of the south, killed
15 people at the UN's Mogadishu offices.

The missing link: human
narrative

Incorporated into the physical and behavioural
data, DigitalGlobe works with research firmORB
Internationalto gather human data. This year the
Somali governmentannouncedit would carry out the first
census in Mogadishu since 1975. In nations deemed "ungoverned or
undergoverned" by DigitalGlobe, it's virtually impossible to gather
enough human data without having people on the ground.

"We try to identify those who are potentially
susceptible to influence," ORB Managing Director Johnny Heald told
Wired.co.uk. "In an election you call it a soft voter -- all the
millions political parties spend is about trying to change ten
percent of the people's minds. Target audience analysis in a
conflict zone is about identifying where those people are who are
susceptible to radicalising and joining Al-Qaeda or going the other
way and rejecting violence. We need to know where are they, what
they believe and how can you influence them."

"GPS is often associated with spying in
fragile countries and this isn't something one wants to be
connected with"

Abdinasir Abdi Mohamed, ORB
International, Nairobi

ORB works with local market researchers and
village elders to ensure interviewers have safe passage. GPS is
integrated as often as possible to provide more accurate
data.

"Working in areas where suspicion is the order of the
day and the only way to survive, like in Somalia, South Sudan and
Ethiopia, getting information for free is an uphill task,"
Abdinasir Abdi Mohamed, Operations Manager at ORB based in Nairobi,
who designs questionnaires, trains interviewers and carries our
local fieldwork observation for projects in south-central Somalia
and Sudan, told Wired.co.uk "This is often complicated by
adding layers like GPS devices. It's often associated with spying
in fragile countries and this isn't something one wants to be
connected with as the consequences in a number of countries are
dire."

Safety of interviewers and interviewees, he
says, is paramount to the company and quality of the data --
anonymity of the client and the interviewee ensures there's no bias
and provides protection.

Small, covert devices are used, and never at an
interviewee's precise location to ensure anonymity. "Data is
downloaded and time matched to pick the target point by matching
with the time recorded. GPS data is limited to the starting point
in such highly insecure areas as Somalia."

Analysis of Kismayo, 2012DigitalGlobe

Interviewers are never sent to areas perceived
as extremely high risk and local authorities are consulted before a
survey takes place. If permission is denied, the survey is usually
moved to a nearby location more amenable.

"In practice this means we do surveys in all areas of
Mogadishu but Kismayo, for
example," explains Abdi Mohamed. "Although liberated from
al-Shabaab, it's currently extremely dangerous to send people to
because roads into town have al-Shabaab checkpoints and if our
teams are stopped and caught with a questionnaire containing
political questions, that's too high a risk."

Questionnaires are carefully constructed to
avoid controversy, with drafts tested before mass fielding.
"For example, three years ago in Mogadishu is was very
dangerous to openly express a view of al-Shabaab. However, they
were frequently referred to as 'the opposition' and we therefore
used this term."

Abdi Mohamed says interviewers constantly receive
verbal threats. "Sometimes information doesn't cascade down
correctly and local police often arrest on suspicion interviewers
are out to cause chaos. But intervention from above always results
in release. Or someone appears at an interviewer's home advising
them against collecting information or he/she will face some
consequences."

"My colleague in Iraq had three interviewers
arrested and beheaded"

Johnny Heald, ORB
International

"If an arrest involves the government, we try to
intervene via their superiors, which takes hours if not days and
sometimes a small fee. Sometimes it can be a rogue officer in a
rural area who knows nothing about authority or militias -- in such
circumstances, the only viable option is to resolve through clan
elders. A goat's slaughtered and the party arrested sometimes
appeased with a small reward/fee to settle any matter."

Sometimes, every caution in the world will not
prevent tragedy.

"My colleague in Iraq had three interviewers
arrested and beheaded," says Heald. "Anonymity is very important so
a lot of the interviewers don't know who they're doing it for. An
interviewer would never know they were polling on behalf of the US
government or MI5, otherwise you introduce a lot of bias -- they'll
think 'oh they've got a war against Muslims' or 'why did they not
help us out?' You have to be neutral."

Heald says the beheadings in Iraq caused the
company to put operations on hold -- "but actually the interviewers
started to say 'it's terrible what's happening, but we need this
otherwise you're cutting off our lifeline.'"

Ethical implications

In spite of anonymity assurances being put in
place for safety's sake, it's extremely disconcerting to think an
individual might have their life endangered for collecting data for
an unknown entity. Surely it's presumptuous to say, 'we know best'
and keep interviewers in the dark, taking away their ability to
make an informed decision about whether or not to go ahead if a
poll is for a nation deemed an enemy of an extremely dangerous
militant faction.

Port of Sudan, Sudan, 8 October, 2011DigitalGlobe, satellite GeoEye-1

"If you respect people, treat them with honesty
-- it may become difficult to do a job, but tough," Jane Frost,
chief executive of Market Research Society (MRS), tells
Wired.co.uk. "That's my personal reaction, I don't know the
specific case."

"I think there's so much potential in all new
technology, the problem is we're not treating customers -- owners
of data and those that apply technology -- as grownups, and we tend
to do things to them rather than with them. That's the problem with
geolocation. It has so much potential to do good, but has to be
managed."

ORB and DigitalGlobe have internal codes of
conduct, but Frost advocates an industry-wide code be followed to
better keep the business of data-gathering in check. After all,
there are no legal requirements restricting the work.

"DigitalGlobe and other companies do not need
permission from a foreign government to collect geospatial
information from a space-based imaging system," explains Kevin
Pomfret, a former US government satellite imagery analyst and
founder of the Centre for Spatial Law and Policy. "This has been
the case since the adoption of the United Nations Principles
Related to the Remote Sensing of the Earth from Space (the "UN
Principles") in 1986. With respect to collection of data on the
ground, there are a variety of local laws."

Frost is not against governments collecting data
or subcontracting, but says, "it depends how you go about
it".

"If everyone in an organisation doesn't show an
ethical core they won't start thinking about the course of their
actions. They won't mean to do any harm. In general the most
problems in life are unintended consequences. It's not in the
best interest of industry if a body's not trusted -- if you're not
trusted you get bad data."

If DigitalGlobe is under government contract,
and ORB contracted by DigitalGlobe -- what code of conduct is a
local team, which does not know who is ultimately employing it,
following?

"The crisis and conflict mapping community is
actively discussing this," says McCue. "Geoenabling data increases
the value of it, but also the sensitivity. How can we leverage this
really powerful resource to help people but also keep them safe?
Collecting data during a post-election period in contentious areas
and flagging locations of individuals, for instance, can be
dangerous. I don't think anybody knows the answers yet."

"Creating increased humanitarian
stability and access to resources is very important as relates to
security"

Colleen
McCue, DigitalGlobe

According to McCue, one theme discussed at last
year's geospatial analytics conferenceWhere, was: "just
because you can do something, doesn't mean you should."

"It's important you're thinking that at every
level of the process," she says. "Is what I'm doing helpful and
what's the potential for harm."

Pomfret believes the industry will not have
problems going forward when it comes to privacy laws, bar
regulations on unmanned aerial vehicles that might be "overly broad
or poorly defined so satellite imagery is unintentionally
included". This is because the industry is relatively open --
international law states nations can image each other as long as
data is available on a non-discriminatory basis, at a reasonable
cost.

"There's a worldwide movement towards
transparency and openness," says Pomfret. "I expect that to
continue. Most nations recognise addressing transnational issues
such as sustainable development is increasingly important.
Addressing these issues requires collecting and distributing more
time-sensitive and accurate information across borders. High
resolution satellite imagery will become an important resource for
this, which is why a number of countries are launching their
own."

ORB interviewers in MaliORB International

Governments might use data to potentially
manipulate foreign policy. However, just as many of DigitalGlobe's
clients are NGOs or organisations such as DFID, with an ultimate
goal of identifying patterns so they can be disrupted. By changing
environmental factors, or identifying and improving gaps in local
infrastructure, militant attacks become more difficult and a safer
environment is engendered.

"There are two main things to focus on when
someone's out searching: they have a potential target -- in the
commercial sector that's groceries, or security it's victims -- and
the second element is the environment," says McCue. "Is it an
enabling environment? Are products on the end of an aisle, or on
the other hand are there deterrents."

A clear example of this was when DigitalGlobe
helped put an end to a string of copper thefts in the US. It's a
low value target, so subjects opted for lower risk thefts at
abandoned buildings. Beef up security here, and you're removing
access and opportunity. In rural Central Africa, ensure wells are
conveniently located and you remove the need for villagers to
travel and cluster in isolated areas with poor
communication.

Tahrir SquareDigitalGlobe, satellite GeoEye-1

"Creating increased humanitarian stability and
access to resources is very important as relates to security," says
McCue. "We talk about ungoverned and undergoverned spaces, but a
lot of times the factors associated with increasing lawlessness
goes back to poaching and illegal exploitation of
resources."

It's why the Enough Project and Satellite
Sentinel Project, in collaboration with DigitalGlobe, are calling
formore satellite surveillanceto help
coordinate the African Union Regional Task Force in the fight
against ivory poaching in Congo's Garamba National Park -- Kony has
encouraged the trading of ivory for supplies, and DigitalGlobe
imagery shows an abandoned LRA camp in Garamba.

Elsewhere, NGO Invisible Children has setup a
network of long-range radio communications in the Democratic
Republic of Congo and Central African Republic so remote areas can
warn communities of LRA's movements.

"They're looking for concealment, especially
when kidnapping, so anything that can increase visibility of a
particular space or increase access is vital," says
McCue.

"We tend to think we have all the
solutions. I think that's wrong"

Hamza
Egala, Organisation of Islamic
Cooperation

A roadmap for predictive analysis

When 50 governments clustered in London in May
to discuss how to aid Somalia,£84m was committed to
helprebuild security forces, double the number of
police officers and train judges and lawyers (with no government
for the past two decades untilSeptember 2012, the
nation has been largely lawless). David Cameron made a point of
warning that UK national security was being threatened by
radicalism, saying "If we ignore it we will be making
the same mistakes in Somalia that we made in Afghanistan in the
90s".

The focus of the conference was, for many, too
heavily concentrated on what's wrong with Somalia. Combine that
with the fact that a conference about Somalia took place nearly
7,000km from its capital, and there's a real risk of alienating the
nation's people and ignoring issues most relevant to them. ORB goes
a way in finding out what those issues are. But as with any
technology, there's a risk of distancing oneself from the people we
say we're helping. For DigitalGlobe, that risk is perhaps more
staggering -- with its technology removed to the lofty heights of
satellites hundreds of kilometres up in the air and analytical
centres thousands of kilometres across the Atlantic, it's vital it
remembers the people on the ground.

Somalia Conf. Hamza.mp4radicalmiddleway

Appealing to the London conference, Hamza Egala,
a young humanitarian aid worker at the Organisation of Islamic
Cooperation said: "One of the biggest mistakes we make as a
diaspora is we tend to think we have all the solutions. I think
that's wrong. We don't.They know how they live, they
know what they need because they live it day by day. They know
their solution more than we know it. All we can do for our people
back home is to try and help out when it comes to technical
support."

When DigitalGlobe launches WorldView-3 in
mid-2014, the first super spectral high resolution commercial
satellite, it will have an accumulative data capture capacity of
4.2 million km2 per day. When that time comes, these words should
echo through its operations: "just because you can do something,
doesn't mean you should."